(pronounced the same, actually) I’ve played quite a few retro titles in my time, and for good reason: Retro, as well as more modern attempts to capture the retro feeling through graphics and/or sound (known as Retraux as a sort of portmanteau of Faux Retro), is one of my favorite styles of entertainment. The Seventies, which I was mostly not...

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean By Travellers Tales and Disney Interactive Genre: LEGO-building, action-adventure Rating: E10+ for Cartoon Violence, Comic Mischief Once again the venerable designers at Travellers Tales partner with a license holder to translate a property to the LEGO medium. This time, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean gets the treatment. It’s every bit as good as the previous...

Terraria By Re-Logic Genre: 2D sandbox action-adventure-puzzler-RPG? Not rated, but if it were it’d probably be E10+. Terraria is an extremely addictive sandbox game that supports co-op, and you will need your friends for this. You make your character from quite a few presets of color and basic look; you create a randomly-generated world, small, medium or large (though even...

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings By CD Projekt RED Genre: RPG Rating: Mature for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of books about the professional monster hunter, Geralt of Rivia, have yielded two games for the PC thus far. The first was a sprawling epic tale...

Bulletstorm By Epic Games and People Can Fly Genre: First-person shooter Rating: Mature for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol Kill with Skill! That’s always been a tenet of most first-person shooters. But here, it’s the main idea of the game! In Bulletstorm, you play Grayson Hunt, a grizzled space pirate, formerly...

Red Faction: Armageddon By THQ and Volition Games Genre: Third-person shooter Rating: Mature for Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence The Red Faction series has long been a staple of the shooter genre, featuring revolutionary (at the time) destructible terrain ever since its first release as a first-person shooter back in 2001. Its second outing was also an FPS, but...

One of my great loves, as you may well know from my other articles, is the puzzle genre of games. These are for when you just need to kick back and enjoy solving problems at your own pace. Sure, there’s something to be said for fast-paced action and drama, but you can’t beat a refined, satisfying puzzle experience. Here are...

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator and a founder of the studio, Studio Ghibli, known for making films that appeal to young and old. Through the friendship and work of fellow director John Lasseter, known for his work at Pixar, Miyazaki’s films have received star-studded dubs (translations) and imports into the United States, for enjoyment by an international audience. Following...

Syberia By Microids Genre: Old-school graphical adventure! Rating: Teen for Mild Language, Use of Alcohol (second only has Mild Language) A rather odd story, but still an endearing one, as well as beautiful pre-rendered art and suitably epic music surrounds this grand adventure written by Belgian comic author Benoit Sokal, the first installment of which released way back in 2002!...